Another example of why I despise Microsoft licensing, from the VDA PDF:

I am a hoster who wants to provide Windows-based desktops as a hosted service. Do my customers need to pay for Windows VDA? OR Is there a Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) for Windows VDA so that hosters can provide Windows-based desktops as a service to third parties?

Currently, there is no SPLA model for Windows VDA. Hence, customers who subscribe to desktops from a third-party hoster will need to pay Microsoft for a Windows VDA license for each device accessing Windows client virtual machines in the datacenter. Additionally, hosters need to ensure that they isolate the hardware and other resources for each company (i.e. no two customers can share the same set of resources, such as hardware, storage, etc).

So if I read that right it is not legal to host a desktop as a service in a virtualized environment.

No two customers can share the same resources, which if I've got a nice big server with 20 VM's on it they are sharing the same hardware and storage, technically.

Or if I have data on a SAN through iSCSI totally segregated from one another but its technically all on the same hardware. Hell what if I have 10 physical servers all connected to the same switch, kind of hard to get away from that scenario.

However your documentation makes that fact about as clear as mud. I brought up VDA because the PDF makes no differentiation between desktop OS and server OS. It says a Windows Based Desktop, Microsoft documentation has mixed the idea of a Windows Based Desktop meaning it could be any MS Windows based product, including the server products.

We will be hosting 100 percent Win2KR2 with RDS, no Win7 VM's or anything else on the same hardware.

but you brought up VDA - if you are not doing server based desktop virtualization - there is NO NEED for licensing Windows VDA.

That sounds fantastic.

However your documentation makes that fact about as clear as mud. I brought up VDA because the PDF makes no differentiation between desktop OS and server OS. It says a Windows Based Desktop, Microsoft documentation has mixed the idea of a Windows Based Desktop meaning it could be any MS Windows based product, including the server products.

We will be hosting 100 percent Win2KR2 with RDS, no Win7 VM's or anything else on the same hardware.

However your documentation makes that fact about as clear as mud. I brought up VDA because the PDF makes no differentiation between desktop OS and server OS. It says a Windows Based Desktop, Microsoft documentation has mixed the idea of a Windows Based Desktop meaning it could be any MS Windows based product, including the server products.

We will be hosting 100 percent Win2KR2 with RDS, no Win7 VM's or anything else on the same hardware.